Watch: Self-Flying Drone Dodges Obstacles at 30mph

The rise of artificial intelligence and self-driving cars seems to point to a future where humans are rendered redundant by their creations. Now, a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a self-navigating drone that can outstrip a human-piloted one. A video of the drone shows it reaching a speed of 30 mph while weaving in and out of trees and branches, leaving a human-piloted drone in its wake. The autonomous drone uses an algorithm that runs 20 times faster than existing obstacle-detection software used in other small unmanned vehicles (UAVs) and is built from off-the-shelf components costing around $1,700. The technology was developed by Andrew Barry, a PhD student at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and MIT professor Russ Tedrake. Try Newsweek:…